A long time I tried the virtual distro, it worked mostly, but it threw a lot of warning messages that bugged me. It really depends on what the systems are like. If they'll boot from a usb key, that's probably the easy way to go. If not, then you'll need an external cd drive or something. If they have hard drives, you may want to just put a linux distro on a usb key, install linux on each machine and follow the standard linux smp directions (http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/cgi-bin/edit/English/LinSMPGuide). For usb key installs, either Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux would be ok, but even Fedora or Ubuntu probably have usb key installs nowadays. DSL and Puppy are good for systems with constrained resources, like low memory or small hard drives. Oh, and linux smp only runs on 64-bit systems, so you'll have to make sure that your p4s are 64 bit compatible. From what I remember, some of them are and some of them aren't.

I'm not making this sound very hopeful, but hey, give it a shot, post if you have trouble and we'll see if we can help!

hmm, not sure it will boot from USB key, or if the troubles i had was just with trying to get it to spoof a floppy drive. When I first tried getting one up and running I tried a 64bit win7 and upon reboot it said not a valid win32 program ( i think), and am 99% sure they wont support 64 bit software.USB cdrom (PATA caddy) was causing me issues too, but i think it was the caddy that time. I have another to try, but I dont want to run from CD or from USB. I'd like to run from the HDDs if possible. They DO support PXE boot, but that option on your link seemed to be for a diskless machine that boots PXE everytime, whereas I'd be happier with maybe install via PXE (not relishing this) or via USB or via CD drive in a caddy if I can get my other pata-usb interface working.Also though, I'm sure I had F@H running SMP on my old P4 hyperthreading.....at 1700 ppd? But maybe this is only available within windows. What do you think would be best ppd for these machines. Pretty low ram though come to think of it. Maybe 256mb per machine, or could do 3 machines with 512.Don't let me hijack this thread any more than this though

_________________There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.
My Folds

Well, check the bios for the systems just in case, in some of those there's a bios switch to activate 64 bit instructions. If you can switch that on, you should be good to go with damn small linux or puppy linux, even in that memory space. Although, not sure how much memory folding needs. Hmm. If they're strictly 32 bit, then you're screwed, windows only for 32 bit. Although xp would work. But don't count on getting the same ppd as you used to, since they put the bonus system in for all smp jobs they readjusted the base system to an i5. With bonuses, systems faster than that got more points, and systems slower than that got fewer points. I was folding on an Atom 330 at the time, and it went from 900ppd to 400ppd, and it would miss deadlines on the slower WUs. Even with the low power usage, there was really no reason to keep it running. If you're looking for more accurate numbers, check colm's posts over on the team blog thread, I think he was folding on a Pentium 4, and after the smp point change he got sick of it (after 10 years of folding!) and gave up.

OK, that sounds kind of down. Alright, bottom line, boot one up, check the bios to see if you can switch 64 bit support on. If not, don't knock yourself out. As much as I want to encourage everyone to fold as much as possible, getting frustrated and burnt out over a small ppd boost is not worth it. Here's a thought, see if you can ebay them, and put whatever money you get toward a fast gpu. They just started selling gtx 560s......

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